Many business organizations utilize approval processes that identify cases in which one member of the organization must submit a request for approval by another member of the organization. For example, an organization's approval process may require certain members of the organization to obtain their managers' approval each time they submit a time sheet recording the hours that they have worked. Typical approval processes may require members of the organization to submit such a request in a variety of other circumstances, such as the following: expense reports, time off requests, objectives & reviews, transfers, hires, promotions, training requests, incentive compensation requests, contracts, purchase orders, quotes, press releases, and content for web posting.
In a typical organization, some of these types of approval requests may be generated manually by the requester, then emailed to the approver. For example, transfer requests may be manually generated by requesters, then emailed to approvers. In many cases, a member of such an organization is required to act on a significant volume such emailed approval requests. Such emailed approval requests are interspersed among other types of incoming email messages, often making them difficult to identify as approval requests. It is sometimes difficult or impossible to determine whether—and how—a particular emailed approval requests has been resolved, or to identify those emailed approval requests that have been received but not resolved.
Other types of approval requests may be generated using one of a number of different application programs. For example, a time sheet application may be used to generate time sheets and submit them for approval, while a separate purchase order application is used to generate purchase orders and submit them for approval. In such cases, an approver may need to separately open each such application to act on the approval requests generated by it. In the above example, for instance, the approver may need to separately open the time sheet and purchase order applications in order to approve time sheets and purchase orders, respectively.
In view of the substantial shortcomings of the conventional approaches to processing approval requests discussed above, a more effective and user-friendly approach would have significant utility.